Reality And Reality In A Streetcar Named Desire, By Tennessee Williams

1210 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Imagery of a streetcar named desire

The Play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” was written by Tennessee Williams in 1947. This is a tragedy that begins in 1947 in the French quarters of New Orleans after the tragic hero, Blanche Dubois, is forced to move from her family home of Belle Reve in Laurel, Mississippi due to a prolonged experience with poverty. Blanche suffers from a form of psychosis that makes it difficult for her to cope with reality. She often hears a music play when ignoring the truth of a past issue or something that does not fit the mold of what she sees as reality. She struggles with living with her sister and abusive brother-in-law, led her to progressively lose her understanding of reality. Her inability to bring her struggles to light due her past and Stanley always being forgiven for his transgressions bring to light the how unchecked desire can be a destructive force in society. The Point of attack begins with Blanche Dubois entering Stella’s Home in the French Quarters. Stella is not yet home, but Stanley gets home and makes his …show more content…

Ultimately, her mental health declines to the point she was admitted to a mental hospital. Eunice tells her, “Don't ever believe it. Life has got to go on” (scene 11). In the end the desire to keep things normal forced Stella to believe Stanley would never do something like that. “The Streetcar Named Desire” shows how desire can become a vice for people’s lives and be a destructive force for others. Blanche was unable to hold her desire and as a result was forced out of her home and lost her credibility to save her future reputation. This was only made worse when Stanley’s inappropriate desire for Blanche made her situation worse as he took away all of her power and those she loved from her. It makes one think how easily one could choose to view reality based on desire or emotion; it helps to to understand how those choices can negatively impact a person and those around

Show More
Related

  • Perspectives Effecting Personal Beliefs

    617 Words  | 2 Pages

    Each and every individual develops some sort of perspective and opinion on many different subjects, objects, and people throughout life. However, these perspectives are prone to change. The play, A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams is a great example of new outlooks on life making an effect on personal beliefs. It shows the denouement of two opposing perspectives and how they can eventually damage or even destroy an individual. Some ideas established by Tennessee Williams are shown by incidents such as Blanche's gay husband committing suicide, Stanley and his perspective of reality revealing the fantasy in which Blanche confides herself in, and Mitch's aspect that every individual is to be given an equal opportunity in life.

    Read More

  • Blanche's State of Mind in Tennessee Williams’ Play, A Streetcar Named Desire

    963 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, main character Blanche Dubois to begin with seems to be a nearly perfect model of a classy woman whose social interaction, life and behavior are based upon her sophistication. The play revolves around her, therefore the main theme of drama concerns her directly. In Blanche is seen the misfortune of a person caught between two worlds-the world of the past and the world of the present-unwilling to let go of the past and unable, because of her character, to come to any sort of terms with the present.

    Read More

  • How Are Dominate Women Presented in A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller and A Streetcar by Tennessee Williams

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, its form of a Southern Gothic enables the playwright to base the play on sexual identity and judgement and the female characters all experience their struggle to liberate from their current position. For example, Blanche is notably known for her situation – The ‘polka dot’ which recurs throughout the play as a testimony to Blanche’s past. The playwright presents these situations using the play’s structure of a recurring cycle of a daily life of the characters. Unlike Alfieri in A View from the Bridge, A Streetcar Named Desire has no narrator and mostly focuses on the characters to establish Williams’ point of view. Perhaps, t...

    Read More

  • Relationships in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire

    604 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the play there are numerous examples of the power he possesses of her. Williams portrays Stella as a little girl who lives in Stanley’s world. She does what he wants, takes his abuse, yet still loves him. Situations like these may have occurred in the 1950’s and lasted, but in today’s time this would only end up in a quick divorce. The first scene of the play (pg. 14) Stanley has just thrown a piece of meat up to Stella as he turns the corner heading for the bowling ally.

    Read More

  • A Streetcar Named Desire Abusive Quotes

    803 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire is a overly dramatic play that concludes in a remarkable manner. The play takes off by introducing Stanley and Stella, a married couple whom live in New Orleans. They have a two-sided relationship, very loving but abusive. Then suddenly Blanche shows up, Stella’s sister, and informs Stella that their home in Belle Reve was lost. A few days later, Blanche meets and becomes attracted to Mitch, a friend of Stanley. Blanche sees Stanley as an abusive husband and contrasts him to Mitch. Blanche immediately begins to develop deep emotions for Mitch because he is very romantic and a gentleman. Blanche begins to talk to Stella because she does not want her sister to be abused.

    Read More

  • Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire - Ghosts of the Past

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    Our lives are consumed by the past. The past of what we once did, what we once accomplished, and what we once could call our own. As we look back on these past memories we seldom realize the impact these events have on our present lives. The loss of a past love mars are future relationships, the loss of our family influences the choices we make today, and the loss of our dignity can confuse the life we live in the present. These losses or deaths require healing from which you need to recover. The effects of not healing can cause devastation as apparent in the play A Streetcar Named Desire. The theme of A Streetcar Named Desire is death. We encounter this idea first with the death of Blanche and Stella's relationship as sisters. Blanche and Stella had a life together once in Bel Reve and when Stella decided to move on in her life and leave, Blanche never could forgive her. This apparent in the scene when Blanche first arrives in New Orleans and meets Stella at the bowling alley. Stella and Blanche sit down for a drink and we immediately see Blanche's animosity towards Stella. Blanche blames Stella for abandoning her at Bel Reve, leaving Blanche to handle the division of the estate after their parents die. As result of Stella's lack of support, we see Blanche become dependent on alcohol and lose her mental state. Blanche comes to be a a terrible reck through out the play as we learn of the details of her life at Bel Reve. Her loss of the entire estate and her struggle to get through an affair with a seventeen year old student. This baggage that Blanche carries on her shoulders nips at Stella through out eventually causing the demise of her relationship. As Blanche's visit goes on with Stella, the nips become too great and with the help of Stanley, Stella has Blanche committed to a mental hospital, thus symbolizing the death of the realtionship they once had. The next death we encounter in the film is the death of Stella and Stanley's marriage. Our first view of Stanley is of an eccentric man, but decent husband who cares deeply for his wife. However, as as Blanche's visit wears on, we come to see the true Stanley, violent and abusive.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Of A Streetcar Named Desire

    860 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams uses the suicide of Blanche's husband to illuminate Blanche's insecurities and immoral behavior. When something terrible happens to someone, it often reveals who he or she truly is. Blanche falls victim to this behavior, and she fails to face her demons. This displays how the play links a character’s illogical choices and their inner struggles.

    Read More

  • Character Conflict in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire

    572 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a play wrought with intertwining conflicts between characters. A drama written in eleven scenes, the play takes place in New Orleans over a nine-month period. The atmosphere is noisy, with pianos playing in the distance from bars in town. It is a crowded area of the city, causing close relations with neighbors, and the whole town knowing your business. Their section of the split house consists of two rooms, a bathroom, and a porch. This small house is not fit for three people. The main characters of the story are Stella and Stanley Kowalski, the home owners, Blanche DuBois, Stella’s sister, Harold Mitchell (Mitch), Stanley’s friend, and Eunice and Steve Hubbell, the couple that lives upstairs. Blanche is the protagonist in the story because all of the conflicts involve her. She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and with shielding her past.

    Read More

  • The Real Blanche DuBois

    1715 Words  | 4 Pages

    Stanley’s treatment of Blanche leaves her alone once again, with what little dreams of returning to her previous status destroyed like the paper lampshade that once gave her the shield from the real her she desperately craved. Stella, the one person Blanche believed she could rely on, sides against her husband after Blanche’s ordeal, leading Blanche to be taken away, relying on the “kindness of strangers”. This final image that Williams leaves us with fully demonstrates that Blanche has been cruelly and finally forced away from her “chosen image of what and who” she is, leaving an empty woman, once full of hope for her future.

    Read More

  • Blanche Dubois: A Tragic Hero

    876 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout Tennessee Williams’s play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Blanche Dubois exemplified several tragic flaws. She suffered from her haunting past; her inability to overcome; her desire to be someone else; and from the cruel, animalistic treatment she received from Stanley. Sadly, her sister Stella also played a role in her downfall. All of these factors ultimately led to Blanche’s tragic breakdown in the end. Blanche could not accept her past and overcome it.

    Read More

  • Ethical Lessons in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is a play about a woman named Blanche Dubois who is in misplaced circumstances. Her life is lived through fantasies, the remembrance of her lost husband and the resentment that she feels for her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Various moral and ethical lessons arise in this play such as: Lying ultimately gets you nowhere, Abuse is never good, Treat people how you want to be treated, Stay true to yourself and Don’t judge a book by its cover.

    Read More

  • A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams

    734 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tennessee Williams gives insight into three ordinary lives in his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” which is set in the mid-1930’s in New Orleans. The main characters in the play are Blanche, Stanley, and Stella. All three of these characters suffer from personalities that differentiate each of them to great extremes. Because of these dramatic contrarieties in attitudes, there are mounting conflicts between the characters throughout the play. The principal conflict lies between Blanche and Stanley, due to their conflicting ideals of happiness and the way things “ought to be”.

    Read More

  • The Desires in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

    738 Words  | 2 Pages

    Blanche uses her dilutions and tries to sway Stella away from Stanley, yet Stella takes all these slanders and belittles them. Stella does this because she loves Stanley and since she is pregnant with his baby.

    Read More

  • A Streetcar Named Desire Identity Analysis

    895 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tennessee Williams explores in his play” A Streetcar Named Desire”, suggests the main protagonist, Blanche, who has ruins her reputation due to her adversity. She is kick out of Laurel. She have no choice, but to move to her sister’s house. This place can allow her to create a new identity and new life. However when Blanche is revealed , it cause her to choose to live in her own fantasy world , because she cannot face the harsh reality. The Play” A Streetcar Named Desire”, by Tennessee Williams illustrates that sensitive people may succumb to fantasy to survive when they faced adversity, ,which forsake their identity to find an acceptable existence.

    Read More

  • Conflict Between Blanche And Stanley In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

    993 Words  | 2 Pages

    The conflict between Stanley and Stella climaxes in scene ten. In this scene Stanley openly takes Blanche apart piece by piece he begins with unenthusiastic comments such as "Swine huh?

    Read More

More about Reality And Reality In A Streetcar Named Desire, By Tennessee Williams

Open Document